Month: November 2013

We just made a “deal” with a country that is holding and torturing an American pastor — without even bothering to secure that pastor’s release.

So forgive me if I have trouble believing in Iran’s good faith or even our own administration’s.

Saeed Abedini, a pastor who lives in Idaho with his wife and two young kids, secured a permission from the government of Iran to enter the country last year to help build an orphanage. Once there, the Revolutionary Guard arrested him and tried him for “national security” charges that were based on nothing more than his Christian faith.

The jihadist kangaroo court convicted him and sentenced him to eight years in prison, where he’s been tortured and abused. We were heartened (the American Center for Law and Justice represents Pastor Abedini’s family), when President Obama raised the issue when he spoke to Iranian president Hassan Rouhani. But in a stunning and immediate rebuke to President Obama, the Iranians shortly thereafter moved Abedini to an even worse prison, where he shares quarters with murderers and rapists.

Yet rather than viewing such a rebuke as unacceptable and holding firm on sanctions until the Iranians relented, the administration not only pressed forward on a deal that gives Iran sanctions relief while allowing it to keep enriching uranium, but also pledged to facilitate “humanitarian transactions” for the people of Iran.

As ACLJ chief counsel Jay Sekulow noted in his Fox column, we have offered to facilitate humanitarian aid for Iran, but Iran can’t even bring itself to make the single “humanitarian transaction” of releasing Pastor Saeed.

If you look at the Obama administration’s “fact sheet” released in the aftermath of the deal, you’ll note the deal is based entirely around a series of Iranian “commitments.” These commitments would be easier to believe if they were accompanied by a single, concrete good-faith action, such as releasing all Americans wrongly held in Iran.

But that apparently wasn’t an administration priority. When Fox News asked why Pastor Saeed wasn’t included in the deal, the administration responded: ”The P5+1 talks focused exclusively on nuclear issues.”

No, they did not. They also included “humanitarian” discussions.

Do we only care about the humanitarian needs of Iranians?

The Obama administration has established its troubling Middle Eastern pattern. In service of its grand vision, it will leave Americans behind — whether they’re besieged and isolated on a dark Benghazi night or alone and afraid in a dreadful Iranian prison.

If you’re going to make an omelet, I suppose you have to break a few eggs.

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Democrats are trying to cover their tracks now that ACA (Obama Care) is such a disaster. I remind you that NOT A SINGLE REPUBLICAN VOTED FOR THIS BILL! This is completely the Dem’s responsibility, and as such they should be taken to task for it!!

Senators will ask the Obama administration for a full investigation into the bungled launch of HealthCare.gov, according to a letter being circulated by Sen. Kay Hagan.

The North Carolina Democrat is collecting signatures this week for a letter to Government Accountability Office Comptroller General Gene Dodaro and Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel Levinson asking for “a complete, thorough investigation to determine the causes of the design and implementation failures of HealthCare.gov.”

These problems are simply unacceptable, and Americans deserve answers and swift solutions. Taxpayers are owed a full and transparent accounting of how the vendors contracted to build the site failed to launch it successfully,” a draft of the letter reads.

Hagan will ask watchdogs at GAO and HHS to report to Congress how much the construction of HealthCare.gov was supposed to cost and how much it will end up costing. She’s also seeking to determine the size of contracts, whether contractors were paid for unsatisfactory work and how much more is currently being spent to fix the website. The administration has told Senate Democrats the website will be functioning as intended by the end of November.

The letter also asks why it took more than a year after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law to award the primary HealthCare.gov contract and why the contract was opened to only a limited pool of bidders.

Hagan’s letter will likely garner signatures from senators in both parties and reflects a gradual push among Democratic lawmakers — particularly those like Hagan up for reelection next year — to propose tweaks, changes and reviews of the Affordable Care Act following a disastrous fall rollout that included a malfunctioning website and millions of canceled insurance plans.

Hagan and Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have signed onto a bill by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) to allow people served with insurance cancellation notices to keep their current plan. Several 2014 Democrats have also endorsed the idea of extending Obamacare’s open enrollment deadline past March 31, a proposal Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) will put into legislation this week. And Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has proposed suspending for a year the individual mandate’s enforcement mechanism, a $95 fine.